How to Optimize Youtube Channel and Rank Higher – Vbloggers

This post will help you Optimize Youtube Channel and help you Rank Higher – The time people spend watching YouTube both on phones and on their TV has more than doubled year over year. Currently video content is on the rise across the world and a lot of people prefer videos to text because videos are more captivating to our sensory organs.

If you own a video blog and you currently don’t see yourself ranking well on YouTube then you need to optimize your youtube channel properly. YouTube drives over 2billion traffic a daily second to google so if your channe is well built in youtube seo then you will be sure to get enough traffic to increase your viewers and earnings as well

You may ask, It’s Worth It to Optimize my Youtube Channel?

Nice question indeed, but right on youtube you have no choice but to optimize if not you will continually be in the shadow of others. There’s an audience to be discovered there, and when you opimize for YouTube, your chances of being discovered increase. Below are the optimization tips.

1. Good And Captivating Video Content

This is the mother of all optimization that will help you to rank higher on youtube , if you have a great content that attracts and keep people watching for several minutes then you have scored high in google algorithmic calculations. People will also share your videos if they like it. The more your social shares for youtube channel increases the more algorithms score you high this will increase your views and this will help you rank better in youtube.

2. Title Optimization

When people search for videos, one of the first things that our eyes are drawn to is the title. That’s often what determines whether or not the viewer will click to watch your video, so the title should not only be compelling, but also, clear and concise and containing your keywords that the viewer is searching for..

Research has shown that videos with an exact keyword match in the title have a slight advantage over those that don’t. Finally, make sure to keep your title fairly short. I recommend limiting your tittle 60 characters to help keep it from getting cut off in pages results.

3. Attractive Description

The official description length is 1,000 but you are not here to write a story. Make your description straight to the point and say something catchy that will compel the reader to click on your video. If you do choose to write a longer description, keep in mind that YouTube only displays the first two or three lines of text — that amounts to about 100 characters. After that point, viewers have to click “show more” to see the full description. That’s why we suggest front-loading the description with the most important information, like CTAs or crucial links.

That way, YouTube figures out how to associate your video with similar videos, which can broaden your content’s reach. But choose your tags wisely. Don’t use an irrelevant tag because you think it’ll get you more views — in fact, Google might penalize you for that. And similar to your description, lead with the most important keywords, including a good mix of those that are common and more long-tail (as in, those that answer a question like “how do I?”).

5. Category

Once you upload a video, you can categorize it under “Advanced settings.” Choosing a category is another way to group your video with similar content on YouTube.

It might not be as simple as it looks. In fact, YouTube’s Director suggests that marketers go through a comprehensive process to determine which category each video belongs in. It’s helpful, the guide writes, “to think about what is working well for each category” you’re considering by answering questions like:

Who are the top creators within the category? What are they known for, and what do they do well?

Are there any patterns between the audiences of similar channels within a given category?

Do the videos within a similar category have share qualities like production value, length, or format?

6. Create Great Thumbnail

Another tip on optimizing your youtube channel and rank higher is to create a great video thumbnail is the main image viewers see when scrolling through a list of video results. Along with the video’s title, that thumbnail sends a signal to the viewer about the video’s content, so it can impact the number of clicks and views your video receives.

While you can always pick one of the thumbnail options auto-generated by YouTube, we highly recommend uploading a custom thumbnail. The Creator Academy reports that “90% of the best performing videos on YouTube have custom thumbnails,” recommending the use of images that are 1280×720 pixels — representing a 16:9 ratio — that are saved as 2MB or smaller .jpg, .gif, .bmp, or .png files. If you follow those parameters, it can help to ensure that your thumbnail appears with equally high quality across multiple viewing platforms.

It’s important to note that your YouTube account has to be verified in order to upload a custom thumbnail image. To do that, visit youtube.com/verify and follow the instructions listed there.

7. SRT Files (Subtitles & Closed Captions)

subtitles and closed captions can boost YouTube search optimization by highlighting important keywords.

In order to add subtitles or closed captions to your video, you’ll have to upload a supported text transcript or timed subtitles file. For the former, you can also directly enter transcript text for a video so that it auto-syncs with the video.

Adding subtitles follows a similar process, however, you can limit the amount of text you want displayed. For either, head to your video manager then click on “Videos” under “Video Manager.” Find the video you want to add subtitles or closed captioning to, and click the drop-down arrow next to the edit button. Then, choose “Subtitles/CC.” You can then select how you’d like to add subtitles or closed captioning.

Google has provided great instructions on how to do that here, as well as in the video below.

8. Cards and End Screens

Cards

When you’re watching a video, have you ever seen a small white, circular icon with an “i” in the center appear in the corner, or a translucent bar of text asking you to subscribe? Those are Cards, which Creator Academy describes as “pre formatted notifications that appear on desktop and mobile which you can set up to promote your brand and other videos on your channel.”

You can add up to five cards to a single video, and there are six types:

Channel cards that direct viewers to another channel.

Donation cards to encourage fundraising on behalf of U.S. nonprofit organizations.

Fan funding to ask your viewers to help support the creation of your video content.

Poll cards, which pose a question to viewers and allow them to vote for a response.

Video or playlist cards, which link to other YouTube content of this kind.

For detailed steps on adding a card to your video, follow these official steps from Google, or check out the video below.

End Screens

End screens display similar information as cards, but as you may have guessed, they don’t display until a video is over, and are a bit more visually detailed in nature. A good example is the overlay with a book image and a visual link to view more on the video below:

There are a number of detailed instructions for adding end screens depending on what kind of platform you want to design them for, as well as different types of content allowed for them by YouTube. Google outlines the details for how to optimize for all of those considerations here.